Who’s listening? Speaking to the most powerful people in the room

Kinder Morgan Panel offered us an opportunity to vent but not be heard. Were our efforts in vain?

I had a dream last night about the Kinder Morgan panel. I was on a large parade ground and an officer leaned into my jeep and demanded that I testify on corexit – the chemical dispersant used to break up oil spills and distribute the oil throughout the water column. My mind raced over what little I knew – its recent approval for use in Canada and its controversial application during the Deepwater Horizon spill where many claim it made the oil more toxic.

It was a trial, but it wasn’t Kinder Morgan and their pipeline and tanker proposal on the dock. I was being tested.

I don’t take dreams literally, but I bring this one up to say that concern for tankers and pipelines runs deep. Somewhere in our subconscious the black goo mingles with our hopes and fears for the future. Our deep-seated anxieties about climate change and the health of our planet mix with our own insecurities, and the phenomenal challenge we face setting things right. Are we up to the task?

Over and over again the speakers drove home the importance of our ocean to our community, culture and economy. Over and over we spoke of the insanity of building major new fossil fuel infrastructure when our survival depends on transitioning to a low carbon economy. Over and over again Kinder Morgan’s pipeline and tanker project was rejected.

The speeches were passionate, informed and moving — but were they heard? The panel billed itself as an opportunity for voices excluded from the NEB review to be heard but tellingly couldn’t adequately accommodate even those that turned up to meeting. More than 100 people were shut out when the hearing room reached capacity and fewer than half the 181 speakers that signed up got to talk. It was a disgrace.

The flaws with the latest panel are not mere organizational oversights. Scheduled hastily during the last days of summer with inadequate notice and an unrealistic deadline it sought to minimize participation. And with no ability to review scientific evidence or allow for the cross examination of Kinder Morgan’s NEB filing, it makes no attempt to fill the most egregious gaps in the NEB’s flawed and biased review.

The panel allowed us an opportunity to vent, but not to be heard. There is no reason to be confident its final report will accurately reflect what went on in hearings. Kim Baird’s op-ed in the globe and mail gives us a likely preview into how our submissions will be framed. Those crying for a legitimate process were characterized as complainers and the near unanimous opposition to Kinder Morgan’s project the panel has heard in B.C. was relegated to the bottom of the list, just one of five themes the panel was hearing. Industry, impatient to get their project built, was given top billing.

So were our efforts in vain?

Something special happens when people speak what their heart holds true. Although the panel was not set up to hear us, in an important way our voices were heard by those who really count. One of our volunteers summed it up for me, “Hearing all those speeches I know I’m not alone.”

Our experience with the panel confirms what we already knew. This project will not be defeated by a panel report but by the passion of people coming together to work for a better future. The government has shown its hand — its promises are hollow. It’s up to us to remind them that they work for us, the people who elected them.

Our passion runs deep and I know we’re up to the task.

3 Responses to “Who’s listening? Speaking to the most powerful people in the room”

The masses of people will decide whether or not this project is built. Clearly they reject this project but will the popular will prevail? I predict that the establishment will lose and that we are on the verge of a historic breakthrough for people’s empowerment from which the rich will not recover. We are our own liberators! Power to the working people!

Thank you Charles, and thank you to Dogwood volunteers and staff who devote themselves to winning the communications war on this and help local people, as your tagline goes, to “reclaim power over our environment and democracy.” I appreciate your critique of this panel, and certainly the NEB panel, and the TMX process. However, on the morning of the 22nd, when our WSANEC, Songhees, Esquimalt and Becher Bay First Nation neighbours presented to a half-filled room, where were you to listen? Where was everyone? Maybe you were all busy preparing to present in the afternoon. . . If you were in fact there (and I apologize if you were and I just didn’t see you), you would of heard very important information on this process from a perspective that so far isn’t shared or widely known, let alone going viral. Experts spoke on some critical elements of the NEB process and impact assessment, of which the panel was indeed struck to hear. If your voices, like you say, were heard by those who really count then who is counting for these groups and their expert witnesses? These voices, and the damning information they shared (information that organizations like yours could bolster, support, and promote interest in) could be interpreted as not really counted. It’s been a hard, exhausting, very personal and lonely journey for the WSANEC communities that I have worked with on this file for the last 3 years. Dogwood (and the rest of the vocal public), your voice is strong. But please keep up with listening too. Look I know you are busy, but if a tree falls in the forest. . . .

Hi Beth, Thank you so much for you message. I was in attendance at the First Nations panel hearing as a representative of Dogwood, but I didn’t have my Dogwood shirt on that would have dentified me. In my capacity as a communications coordinator, I was there to broadcast the proceedings on social media in hopes that the voices of First Nations presenters would reach out beyond those in the room. As an organization, Dogwood strives to learn, to be better and to be as effective as possible — and you’re right, listening is the key to all of those things.

I felt fortunate to be able to attend the First Nations panel hearing. I was extremely moved by the speakers on the panel who spoke out against the Kinder Morgan expansion, and learned a great deal about the work Becher Bay and neighbouring nations had done to provide the National Energy Board with comprehensive assessments of the impacts the project would have on the land and oceans Indigenous people depend on — only to be ignored.

It never ceases to amaze me the fortitude shown by those who stand up and speak out time and again against this sham of a pipeline review process, and the First Nations panel in Victoria last week was the perfect example of this. Almost every one of the speakers explained how emotionally and physically affected they are by the Kinder Morgan proposal, but in spite of this fact they carry on fighting. It was powerful, to say the least.

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